Hello there,this is Jonan4tor here to Debate a debational topic that's been around for awhile:does God exist? Now I am talking about the Christian God. Also,since I am Christian,I will obviously take up the argument that he does exist. I do not wish to offend anyone's religion here,and I ask that you don't offend mine. We will debate using logic and math and science(if we can.) The first round is acceptance and from there on it is open.

Before I begin my argument I want to thank my opponent for following the rules and taking his time to debate with me today.(or tonight)

I will at first begin with the first fundamental piece of evidence,what Atheism actually is. Atheism is the belief that there is no God that exist and that 2 massive rocks collided with each other and the universe was created and dinosaurs and evolution and everything. But let's simplify this for a moment and put this in another perspective:Atheism;the belief that there was nothing and then nothing happened to nothing and nothing magically exploded into everything for no reason and created everything and then a bunch of everything magically arranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits that turned into dinosaurs. That's what Atheist believe. Where did those rocks come from if there was nothing? How did those rocks,or the "Big Bang" create everything like that? Don't you think it's kinda coincidental how we just happened to be on a planet with an atmosphere and plants and animals and everything to help us survive?
But from a Christian point of view,it makes more sense. God created the universe,He made a stable planet with plants and animals and everything to help us humans survive. Then he made the first two people Adam and Eve.
And Adam and Eve were supposed to live forever until they caved into temptation and started having life spans. People that lived at the beginning at time had at longer life span because they were closer to God. But as you look at history,you'll see that people life span seem to be getting shorter. And if you were to look at history again,you'd see that people also became farther and farther away from God. I hardly call this a coincidence.

All of what was stated by my opponent in the second round is something that I would love to argue against, but since I am following standard debating procedure, I shall post my own arguments, before rebutting his own.

Reason 1: Tangible Proof

In most philosophical circles, one would assume that proof needs to be asserted, or some degree of proof, in order to facilitate the creating of "fact" - being that it cannot be disproven.

With the inconsistency of religion, in this case, being that of Christianity, one can only assume that:

Either God is real, with which there is no evidenceOr that God is not real, with which there is no evidence

It is impossible to strictly prove the existence of any deity, as there has yet to be any tangible proof presented. However, we can assume within a reasonable degree that when there is such an inconsistency of proof - the fact asserted is false.

Reason 2: Arguing A Negative

In logic alone, you are never called upon to argue the premise of a negative. By that definition, it cannot be deduced that due to the insufficient amount of evidence disproving God, that there a God. It cannot be asserted that a deity exists if there is no proof, as all assertions need backing.

If backing lacks, or is nonexistent, it can be inferred within a reasonable limit that the subject, in this case being the Christian God, does not exist.

Reason 3: Ontology

"Ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being" [1]

Ontology practically states that if human beings can conceive of something, or even concieve it to be true, then my some reasonable margin, it is true. Whether you believe this to be a ghost, phantasm, or even a deity, it is hereby proclaimed true by the necessity of Ontology.

This is practically a form of wishful thinking and naivety. To simply state that anything of any sort can be true by the conception would state that all forms of imagination are also all forms of reality, which is fallacious in itself.

The fallacy accompanying -

The atheist proclaims that no convicing argument about the necessitation of God has been conceived of without a convicing rebuttal, and that definitively, it does not stand.

Reason 4: Human Psychology

One of the biggest reasons for the creating of religion, as well as the idea of worshipping a deity was the absense of science, logic, and reason. Above all, this absense creates a rift that needs to be filled, and in the case of humans, religion filled this rift. However, with the reapplication of science, and with the enourmouse strides taken by humanity in the past century in the field of physics, chemistry, and applied sciences, it's quite a reasonable statement to make, being that God does not exist.

Humanity has needed a deity to prove the existence of what was perceived to be supernatural. The creation of the crops, the land, the cattle, the first humans, the Earth, the universe, etc. were all ideas that were pereived to be filled with Godly involvement, and science has shown this to be true.

All aspects that have existed, for which the existence of God was needed, have been disproved by science and reason alone.

The universe was not created by a deity, as something cannot exist before nothing. The Earth was not created by a deity, and humans have not evolved from Adam and Eve. To state, archeologists have traced humanity back to 200,000 years, which is far longer than anything attested by Creationists.

Evidently, the creation of the Earth and all of its organisms billions of years ago happens to also be proved by science, not faith.

By this argument, it states that various aspects of the Bible, which is the single source of proof for the existence of God, has many inconstistencies. Most assertions, ranging from the creation of a young, flat Earth to the creation of human beings by a deity has been disproven by science. A book that makes so many illegitimate claims and that lacks any evidence of such should be seen as a discredit novel, one that cannot be used as reasoning for the exitence of God.

I end my opening argument, and I look forward to my opponents rebuttals.

1. You ask for proof in many of your claims but yet you don't back them up with little or no proof. You say all these sciency things(which I will get to. I will not address it sounding ignorant without coming back to it)but you don't back them up. You also don't have an explanation. What started the the big bang? You don't know. All theist believe is that there was a sudden burst of light and the seeds of everything that exist and ever will and ever had was planted at that very moment.
You say that nothing exist while there is nothing in the Universe. If that is true,then how did the Universe get made? In order to back up you theory and say there might've been something that cause it. Like it it could be rocks crashing into each other,or a sun exploding. But in order to do that,you also open up my theory that God does exist. You're stuck. You cant back your up and even make a tiny bit sense without mine making a lot of sense.

2. You argue that science is the down fall of religion. You say that religion was to help the human mind understand what was going on,and to explain things. I know this isn't true for many reasons. For one,you say that they used God to explain stuff like crops or weather and other stuff like that. This isn't true. Many people understood that you can mix breed and how to make new food and adapt. In fact,a large golden age for Christianity was in the year 1571. It was a 100 year golden age. So let's say it was even from 1471-1571,it's still a big time. The world was expanding,there were wars,fights,expansions,everything. And people understood a lot mathematics and science at the time. And it was a golden age for Christianity.
We also have more information that science and math isn't the downfall and disproves it,but helps it. Each cell in our bodies we have a instruction code,kinda like a miniature computer code. The DNA code in our cells is similar to how the 10101 and all that in a computer works. The DNA is made up of 4 chemicals that abbreviate to A,T,G,C,and there are 3 billion of these letters in 1 cell. Just like you can program your phone,the DNA instructs your cells. And how did the pattern arrange so nicely to where a 3 billion digit code is in each of our 70-100 trillion cells. It would have to be awfully coincidental if the first people had codes likes these in them. But they don't get like that without someone putting them like that.

3. Richard Feynman,who is a Nobel prize winner in quantum electrodynamics,mind you that,has said "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle." So here a very very very smart person who a Nobel prize for something i can barely pronounce is wondering why the universe follows the rules of mathematics and science and the laws of nature. And he's not the only scientist,scientist all over have bee wondering the same thing for along time. So why is the universe doing this? doesn't the answer seem simple? God. He's doing this. Who else? Why else?

4. Even if that wasn't enough proof and math and real live people and scientist talking,here's some more:
A scientist has calculated that there is a 67% that god exist using a 200 year old formula. So already we are using math and science to see that there is a more than probable chance that God exist. Now while you think this formula he's using is some Indian chance that's not math,your wrong. He starts the formula off at a 50/50 chance he exist,which is fair for Atheist and Christians. Then he factors for everything and ends with a 67% God exist. This is real proof,real people,real science

I would like to thank my opponent for responding. I shall now begin my rebuttals.

Contention 1

"Atheism is the belief that there is no God that exist and that 2 massive rocks collided with each other and the universe was created and dinosaurs and evolution and everything."

My opponent has a very bad interpretation of what Atheism is. Atheism is strictly the belief that by no means, can there be a God. There are subsets of atheism, such as Agnostics, that state that they can never know for sure if there is no God, but the just choose not to believe in one.

Evidently, there is a difference between the clear topic of the debate, which is the existence of God, versus ranting about the Big Bang and Creationism. Creationism has been disproved by a very large margin by most scientists.

Contention 2:

"But let's simplify this for a moment and put this in another perspective:Atheism;the belief that there was nothing and then nothing happened to nothing and nothing magically exploded into everything for no reason and created everything and then a bunch of everything magically arranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits that turned into dinosaurs."

At this point, you are being extremely childish.

The Big Bang is far more specific than stating that something came from nothing. I

"The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest nown periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model accounts for the fact that the universe expanded from a very high density and high temperature state, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background, large scale structure and Hubble's Law.If the known laws of physics are extrapolated beyond where they are valid, there is a singularity. Modern measurements place this moment at approximately 13.8 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe.After the initial expansion, the universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles, and later simple atoms. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity to form stars and galaxies." [1]

The universe began from an extremely hot state and expanded, and continues to expand to today. The fact that the universe began almost 14 billion years ago should be evidence enough to state how so much expansion could be done over such a long period of time.

Additionally, the gravitational waves arose from cosmic inflation, which occurred after the Big Bang.

Contention 3:

"And Adam and Eve were supposed to live forever until they caved into temptation and started having life spans. People that lived at the beginning at time had at longer life span because they were closer to God. But as you look at history,you'll see that people life span seem to be getting shorter. And if you were to look at history again,you'd see that people also became farther and farther away from God. I hardly call this a coincidence."

Firstly, you have yet to provide evidence that states Adam and Eve to be immortal, or to live an abnormally long life. In fact, life span has done the opposite of what you have suggested, and it's a rather amusing assertion my opponent has made. To simply state that life spans have gone down over time, and that this was due to their lack of love for God, is denial of 2 facts.

For one, the life spans of humans has gone up tremendously over time, as the following shows:

This was taken from the following site [2]

It can be observed through this graph that the life expectancy has gone up over a period of time, and during this same period, belief in God as a percentage of population has gone down. Ironically, the largest exponential growth in life expectancy has been over the period of time in which Charles Darwin brought up his ideas of Evolution, and where Atheism became extremely prevalent.

" In fact,a large golden age for Christianity was in the year 1571. It was a 100 year golden age. So let's say it was even from 1471-1571,it's still a big time."

- this is yet another one of my opponent's arguments that gets shatterred by this graph. According to his own assertion, life expetancy goes up as more people believe in God, and according to his second assertion, the Golden Age for Christianity was in the year 1571, and during hte period of 1471-1571.

Firstly, he has given absolutely NO proof for this assertion, so it leads me to believe it to be false. Regardless, it can be observed from the graph that the life expectancy went down from "39 years in 1553 to 22 years in 1558". Both of these years are ecompassed inside of this self-proclaimed "Golden Age".

I also would like to know how the life expectancy has gone up by such a large margin, up to the low 80s, while the population of Atheists/Agnostics has gone up as well. It seems as if there is a trend, in which as more people are atheists and become attuned to reason and science, more people benefit and their life expectancy goes up.

This is ironic, seeing as my opponent just blabbered a bunch of unfounded rhetoric that I would only expect to come out of the words of the most fundamentally moronic priest in the history of Christianity.

According to this poll by Pew Research, more people in the United States identify as Atheist/Agnostic than ever before, and the life expectancy of Americans is in the high 70s, low 80s.

Contention 4:

"The DNA is made up of 4 chemicals that abbreviate to A,T,G,C,and there are 3 billion of these letters in 1 cell. Just like you can program your phone,the DNA instructs your cells. And how did the pattern arrange so nicely to where a 3 billion digit code is in each of our 70-100 trillion cells. It would have to be awfully coincidental if the first people had codes likes these in them. But they don't get like that without someone putting them like that."

I would like my opponent to explain to me how this came to be. So far, he has yet to prove this. Either way, if we inherited knowledge of God and his existence, then we would have also inherited knowledge of biology, which hasn't been founded since very recently. The idea of DNA became fact within the past century, rather than the 2000 years that Christianity has been practiced. If God understood cell structure so well, why would there be bacteria and disease? Evidently, this will be answered with the argument that has been repeated across all channels, being that of "the Devil did it".

Conclusion:

My opponent has not proven a single thing. He has yet to provide any substantial evidence as to why what he says is true, and states that I need to disprove it, which I do not. If he cannot prove this, as we agreed, then he loses. He has the full burden of proof, and he has yet to meet this requirement.

So in my final argument,I will bring up a different subject,because apparently using math,logic,science,quoting mathematicians and scientist alike is not "proof",I will do something else. Now we could argue forever about chemistry and archaeology,but instead I will bring up something else,something he cant argue:Jesus.
Now you might be thinking "He's screwed" because this is biblical,must hear me out.
Tacitus was a senator and Roman historian,and remember,the Romans hated Jesus.
Tacitus last major work was called "Annals",it is a biography of Nero. Nero was suspected of burning part of Rome,(which you can look up. There was a great fire in Rome)so in order to stop the accusations,he shifted the blame onto Christians and blamed them. I quote
"Neither human effort nor the emperor"s generosity nor the placating of the gods ended the scandalous belief that the fire had been ordered by Nero. Therefore, to put down the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts " whom the crowd called "Chrestians." The founder of this name, Christ [Christus in Latin], had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate " Suppressed for a time, the deadly superstition erupted again not only in Judea, the origin of this evil, but also in the city Rome, where all things horrible and shameful from everywhere come together and become popular."
Tacitus's terse statement about "Christus" clearly corroborates the New Testament on Jesus's death.
Tacitus presents four pieces of accurate knowledge about Jesus:
1. Christus, used by Tacitus to refer to Jesus, was one distinctive way by which some referred to him, even though Tacitus mistakenly took it for a personal name rather than an epithet or title;
2.this Christus was associated with the beginning of the movement of Christians, whose name originated from his;
3. he was executed by the Roman governor of Judea; and
4. the time of his death was during Pontius Pilate"s governorship of Judea, during the reign of Tiberius. (Many New Testament scholars date Jesus" death to c. 29 C.E.; Pilate governed Judea in 26"36 C.E., while Tiberius was emperor 14"37 C.E.6) Let's look at some moret
First, Jesus' execution is reported in a number of ancient sources: Christian and non-Christian. In addition to the four Gospels and a number of letters contained in the New Testament, all of which were written in the first century, Jesus' execution is even reported by a number of ancient non-Christian sources. Josephus (late first century), Tacitus (early second century), Lucian (early to mid second century), and Mara bar Serapion (second to third centuries) all report the event. The fact that these non-Christians mentioned Jesus in their writings shows that Jesus' death was known outside of Christian circles and was not something the Christians invented.

Second, the probability of surviving crucifixion was very low. Crucifixion and the torture that many times preceded it may have been the worst way to die in antiquity. Many of us saw Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, and witnessed the brutal practice of scourging. A number of ancient sources describe it, such as Josephus, a Jewish historian in the first century who tells of a man who had been whipped so severely that he was filleted to the bone.1 Elsewhere he reports that a group was whipped until their intestines were exposed.2 In a second century text named The Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Roman whip is said to expose a person's veins and arteries.3 The victim was then taken outside the city walls where soldiers using nails would impale him to a cross or a tree.4 Then he was left hanging in excruciating pain. In fact, the word "excruciating" comes from the Latin "out of the cross." In the first century, a Roman philosopher named Seneca described crucified victims as having battered and ineffective carcasses, maimed, misshapen, deformed, nailed and "drawing the breath of life amid long-drawn-out agony." 5

Only one account exists of a person surviving crucifixion. Josephus reported seeing three of his friends crucified.6 He quickly appealed to his friend the Roman commander Titus who ordered that all three be removed immediately and provided the best medical care Rome had to offer. In spite of this action, two of the three still died. Thus, even if Jesus had been removed prematurely and medically assisted, His chances of survival were bleak. Even with that, no evidence exists that Jesus was removed while alive or that He was provided any medical care whatsoever, much less Rome's best.

Third, professional medical opinions are unanimous in concluding that Jesus certainly died as a result of being crucified.7 While some debate remains regarding the actual cause of death by crucifixion, the majority opinion is that He died by asphyxiation-or from a lack of oxygen. Our historical understanding of crucifixion supports that conclusion. A number of ancient sources report the practice of breaking legs in order to expedite death on the cross.8 How would this expedite death? I have two friends, each of which is a director of the emergency room at two metropolitan hospitals.9 I asked each of them if there were any medical reasons for why breaking the legs of a crucified victim would expedite their death. They answered that a few possibilities exist, but that these would certainly be rare. So how would breaking a crucified victim's legs expedite their death?
So not only is this eyewitness account,but we got historical background to help prove it also.
Now lets see about some evidence about Jesus rising from his tomb.(Even if you don't believe he existed)
1.The tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered empty by a group of women on the Sunday following the crucifixion.
2.Jesus' disciples had real experiences with one whom they believed was the risen Christ.
3.As a result of the preaching of these disciples, which had the resurrection at its center, the Christian church was established and grew.
Second to this argument, the earliest Jewish arguments against Christianity admit the empty tomb. In Matthew 28:11-15, there is a reference made to the Jew's attempt to refute Christianity be saying that the disciples stole the body. This is significant because it shows that the Jews did not deny the empty tomb. Instead, their "stolen body" theory admitted the significant truth that the tomb was in fact empty. The Toledoth Jesu, a compilation of early Jewish writings, is another source acknowledging this. It acknowledges that the tomb was empty, and attempts to explain it away. Further, we have a record of a second century debate between a Christian and a Jew, in which a reference is made to the fact that the Jews claim the body was stolen. So it is pretty well established that the early Jews admitted the empty tomb.Why is this important? Remember that the Jewish leaders were opposed to Christianity. They were hostile witnesses. In acknowledging the empty tomb, they were admitting the reality of a fact that was certainly not in their favor. So why would they admit that the tomb was empty unless the evidence was too strong to be denied? Dr. Paul Maier calls this "positive evidence from a hostile source. In essence, if a source admits a fact that is decidedly not in its favor, the fact is genuine." So here's some more evidence of this. We are using some more logic and and we are still quoting people,but this isn't proof because it got shot down when I did it before,so I'll move on.
One more thing
The empty tomb is supported by the historical reliability of the burial story. NT scholars agree that he burial story is one of the best established facts about Jesus. One reason for this is because of the inclusion of Joseph of Arimethea as the one who buried Christ. Joseph was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrein, a sort of Jewish supreme court. People on this ruling class were simply too well known for fictitious stories about them to be pulled off in this way. This would have exposed the Christians as frauds. So they couldn't have circulated a story about him burying Jesus unless it was true. Also, if the burial account was legendary, one would expect to find conflicting traditions--which we don't have.

So here we have it,my finale argument. I urge you all to vote fairly in your decision,and re-read this as well as my opponents. I also want to say thank you one more time for my opponent doing this argument.

I would like to inform all of the voters of my opponents illicit plagiarism, and that he has even agreed to this in the comments. I will not write an argument, as I find this to be a blantant form of disrespect, to not even show the common courtesy to write your own arguments. I spend time writing my arguments, and so should my opponent.

The links are also posted in the comments, if anyone has trouble accessing them.

No, you nitwit. I responded this way because you broke a rule that is in tandem with the general rules of ddo, which is plagiarism. If you copy your arguments, then you plagiarize, and this is not allowed. Save yourself the scrutiny while you can, and accept the damn loss.

Reasons for voting decision: Plagiarism is against the rules of the debate as agreed in the first rounds. Therefore Pro is in violation of the virtual contract he signed upon the commencement of the debate. I give Con arguments and sources because Pro plagiarized and did not provide evidence to back up his claims. I also gave Con conduct because of the violation of rules.

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